MG Motor GS review

While it’s still some way from making waves that’ll be felt in Paris, Cologne, Wolfsburg and Turin, MG Motor UK Ltd – the modern inheritor of Herbert Austin’s once-great Longbridge plant – has been growing fast since it emerged from the chrysalis of not one but two apparent Far Eastern takeover bids five years ago.

Now Chinese-owned but British-crewed and operated, with more than 500 staff at the Birmingham facility where it completes final assembly from knockdown kits shipped from SAIC in China, MG Motors is one of the greatest self-proclaimed success stories of modern manufacturing in Britain.

There are questions about exactly how ‘British’ that story is, never mind how successful, but the business model’s potential stares you in the face.

GS’s new scalable platform has been developed exclusively for SUVs by MG Motor parent SAIC

Buy part-built cars at cost price in Chinese yuan, finish them in Britain to the right standard, sell them at a healthy profit but cheaply enough to undercut your rivals and then watch the competition fail to keep up.

If you were setting up a truly global and sustainable volume-selling car-making business in 2016, there’s a good chance that you might want it to operate exactly like this.